In many scientific applications, it is necessary to detect the direction of passing neutrons. Traditionally, this has been a difficult thing to do inasmuch as neutrons are neutrally charged and therefore do not, by themselves, develop electrical potential.
The prior art includes a number of detectors utilizing a convertor layer of hydrogenous material, such as polyethylene adjacent to a silicon detector. When a neutron of sufficient energy passes through the hydrogenous layer, one or more protons will be liberated and the passage of these protons through the silicon layer results in the generation of a measurable electrical potential. However, these basic structures are only capable of detecting the presence of neutron flux, but are incapable of establishing the direction of this flux.
A recent concept proposed by Los Alamos National Laboratory incorporates a stacked structure of single alternating hydrogenous and silicon layers. The direction of incidence for a neutron can be deduced by measuring the track and total energy of a recoil proton as it passes through the detector. However, the concept requires a very highly segmented detector (e.g. microstrips) and copious signal processing as well as data analysis.